Elliott Miles McKinley: keyboards, laptop (sampling, drum & percussion beats, looping, live mixing/processing)

1. McKinley’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. Commissions include those from the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, the Czech Philharmonic Chamber Music Society, and the Martinů String Quartet. His music has been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, and has been featured on national and international festivals including the Ernest Bloch Music Festival, and the Alba International Music Festival in Italy. McKinley is a recipient of a number of awards, grants, and fellowships including awards from BMI and ASCAP, grants from Meet the Composer and the American Composers Forum, and a New Frontiers grant from Indiana University. McKinley holds degrees in jazz studies and composition from the New England Conservatory of Music and the University of Michigan, and received a Ph.D. in composition from the University of Minnesota. Currently McKinley teaching music theory and composition at the University of Tennessee School of Music.
   

Marc Jensen: accordion, toy-piano, slide-whistle, conch trumpet, tenor recorder, assorted percussion, voice

1. Jensen is a composer, performer, and scholar who received a Ph.D. in music composition from the University of Minnesota. Much of his work is oriented around composing relationships rather than specific sounds: setting up situations in which performers follow simple sets of rules to interact and produce an unpredictably complex whole. Jensen holds a teaching certificate through the Deep Listening Institute and has edited several books on Deep Listening. He is the author/composer of Open Spaces: Environmental Listening and Sounding, and has published articles in several journals including Perspectives of New Music, Tempo, and Cinema Journal.
   

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James E. Holdman: mandolin, slide lap-dulcimer, electric bass, mouthpieces, assorted percussion, laptop, voice

1. Holdman is a composer and multi-instrumentalist performer. His compositions have been performed by many contemporary music ensembles including Zeitgeist, Duo46, counter)induction,  and the Renegade Ensemble. For more than thirty years he has been performing improvisationally-based music with groups such as earWorm, Modal Operandi, Jetsam Organic Ensemble, The Puny Band, Head Octet, and SEPIA. He received his Ph.D. in music composition at the University of Minnesota.
   

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Zachary Crockett: flutes, shakuhachi, ocarina, pan-pipes, Irish tin-whistle, assorted percussion, voice

1. Crockett is a prolific composer, computer programmer, and interdisciplinary collaborator living in Minneapolis. His artistic fascinations lie especially in the perception of music performance as ritual. This philosophy presents itself most forcefully to date in his work, Fire: Their Voices Cracked for saxophones, percussion, and didgeridoo. His music has been described most often as primal and reverent. As a creator and curator of electroacoustic music Crockett served as Assistant Director of the University of Minnesota Spark Festival of Music and Arts. He frequently collaborates with choreographers and is composer-in-residence with the Renegade Ensemble.